The heart of a computer's long term memory is an assembly that is referred to as a magnetic disk drive. The magnetic disk drive includes a rotating magnetic media (disk), write and read heads that are suspended by a suspension arm adjacent to a surface of the rotating magnetic disk and an actuator that swings the suspension arm to place the read and write heads over selected circular tracks on the rotating disk. The read and write heads are directly located on a slider that has an air bearing surface (ABS). The suspension arm biases the slider into contact with the surface of the disk when the disk is not rotating but, when the disk rotates, air is swirled by the rotating disk. When the slider rides on the air bearing, the write and read heads are employed for writing magnetic impressions to and reading magnetic impressions from the rotating disk. The read and write heads are connected to processing circuitry that operates according to a computer program to implement the writing and reading functions.
One disadvantage to the magnetic or hard disk drive (HDD) is that they are generally manufactured in standard form factors with standard capacities. Unlike for other types of memory such as Flash or RAM, it is not trivial to create HDDs with a lower capacity from standard capacities and form factors.
Typically, media for HDDs is manufactured in a two sided format as shown in FIG. 4. The media is processed in a sputtering tool where substantially identical layers are sputtered on to both sides of the media. Thus, a two sided media, with both sides being substantially identical is created.
One method for lowering the capacity of an HDD is to turn off one media-head combination. However, such an HDD is still expensive to produce since the resources to make the media and the head are already used. Further, other companies have created special processes to put two media simultaneously into a manufacturing process as shown in FIG. 2. This allows each side of the media to be sputtered on one side. For instance, a first side 201 of a disk 204 will be sputtered, while second side 202 of disk 204 will not be sputtered because disk 203 blocks the sputtered material from reaching the second side 202 of the first disk. However, such a process requires that the sputter tools be altered to accommodate two disks being sputtered in the same sputter chamber at the same time. Further, leaving one side of a disk unsputtered creates a disk with some unfavorable materials properties. What is needed is a method of producing lower cost HDDs with favorable materials properties within current manufacturing processes.